Conquest Of Interplanetary Space.

Title page: “Izdanie vtoroe, pod redaktsiei P. I. Ivanova,” Oborongiz, Moscow, 1947. The imprint states that it was approved for printing on 17 November 1947 in an edition of 5,000 copies, with G. A. Aristov as responsible editor. The editor’s preface notes that the first edition of 1929 ran to only 2,000 copies and had become a bibliographic rarity, and it lists points in which Kondratyuk was first or original: combustion in ozone instead of oxygen, the “proportional passive mass” and the proof that a rocket cannot leave Earth’s gravity without shedding its tanks, the conditions in which wings are useful, and a close study of heating in the atmosphere.

Besides the editor’s preface, the book reprints extracts from the author’s letter to Prof. Rynin and from his prefaces to the first edition,. The thirteen chapters cover the rocket’s data and the loading formula, exhaust velocity and propellants, the combustion chamber and nozzle, the proportional passive mass, trajectory types and required velocities, maximum acceleration, the effect of the atmosphere on departure, braking on return by atmospheric resistance, an interplanetary base with rocket-artillery supply, control and orientation instruments, general prospects and experiments. B. V. Liapunov’s 1951 lecture The Problem of Interplanetary Voyages in Catalog D discusses Kondratyuk’s ideas.